The “Mountain Girl” from Barren County

by Chloe Paddack, Exhibits Fellow

Did you know that one of the biggest radio stars of the 20th century was from Southcentral Kentucky?

Cynthia Mae Carver, more popularly known as Cousin Emmy, marketed herself as a Kentucky Mountain Girl, but her roots were in the bluegrass songs of Barren County. She and her “Kinfolk” became renowned bluegrass musicians that starred on local radio stations like WHAS but also featured on CBS stations with over 70,000 listeners. So how did this Kentucky girl ascend to stardom?

 

 

Cynthia Mae Carver was born March 14, 1903, to a sharecropping family. Her father was on the run for manslaughter charges, and Cynthia recalled that her childhood home “had cracks between the walls so big that you could a-throwed a cat betwix them without touching a hair.”

Cynthia grew up stripping tobacco in the fields with her siblings, but decided early on that she didn’t want a part of the farming life. Since musical talent ran in the family, she began performing for small crowds at quilt parties or the local County Court Days. She learned 13 different instruments, including the dulcimer, guitar, and fiddle, but she preferred the banjo above the rest.  There wasn’t a lot of money in it, but she was determined.

“I told the folks that I was a-goin’ to git on the radio. My mother she upped and whopped me.”

 

 

Cynthia’s escape route came from an unexpected source. Her mother filed for divorce, leaving Cynthia’s violent-prone and law-breaking father for a new life with the children in St. Louis. Cynthia was 17. She and her siblings performed for a while, including on the KMOX radio station, before Cynthia decided she would do well on her own.

 

 

Cynthia moved back to Kentucky, and before long, she had her own show on WHAS. Along the way, she gathered several different musicians that became Cousin Emmy and Her Kinfolk. They toured the country, sometimes driving over 500 miles to honor multiple stage commitments. As Emmy, she even featured in two movies: Swing in the Saddle and The Second Greatest Sex. She was also on Pete Seeger’s television show, “The Rainbow Quest,” alongside names as big as Johnny Cash.

 

 

Cynthia always remembered her desire to overcome the poverty she grew up with as a child, and it was likely for that reason that she remained her own manager and advocated for herself. At one point in her career, she was making more than $14,000 per week in today’s money. She knew her worth and stood up for herself when many women musicians were still confined to traditional gender roles or managed by men.

As Cousin Emmy biographer Nancy Richey wrote, “she was playing in a ‘man’s world’ and not only learned how to play in it, but how to succeed in it. She felt no one could represent her and her interests better than herself.”

 

 

Cynthia never shied away from playing her bluegrass music. She was proud of her Kentucky roots, though she admittedly suggested she was a “mountain” girl despite living nowhere near the Appalachian Mountains. In 1947, she worked with Alan Lomax to create her album “Kentucky Mountain Ballads.” This was during an era when many musicians were prioritizing live music instead of recorded music, so it is the only record she recorded in her lifetime. But it stands as a testament of her dedication to the ballads she grew up listening to and performing in Barren County, Kentucky.